Christianity Has An Image Problem

As I have worked with my dad and seen a lot of the media response to Christianity, it has me really confused. The negative examples of Christianity on the news do not accurately reflect the God I know, nor the Christians I know personally. But, I do know that I used to perceive Christians the same way.

by Charis Hillman Brown

Have you ever noticed that most of the media attention
Christians receive is negative?

As I have worked with my dad and seen a lot of the media response to Christianity, it has me really confused. The negative examples of Christianity on the news do not accurately reflect the God I know, nor the Christians I know personally. But, I do know that I used to perceive Christians the same way. Why? I had personal experiences with Christians who did not accurately reflect Christ. But, I think it is high time for this to change.

Why do people perceive Christianity this way?

When my dad went
to speak at the Harvard Transformation Conference back in 2011 at Harvard
University, I couldn't believe the response.
There were all sorts of groups who didn't want us to be there just
because we said we were hosting a "Christian" conference. We might as well have been terrorists!

In fact, a LGBT
group picketed our event. They had a
sign with my dad's name on it saying, "Os Hillman, Take A Bow for Anti-Gay
Violence In Uganda."

My dad had
formerly been connected to someone who was currently supporting controversial
anti-gay legislation in Uganda, but my dad was not involved, nor was he in
support of the legislation. The group
failed to get all the facts straight before they began to defame my dad and our
event.

A friend of my
dad's and I decided to hang around the protest and see what they were
saying. They absolutely thought our main
purpose there was to thwart them and tear them down. The only thing I was thinking was,
"something negative must have been done to each of these people by a Christian
in the past for them to be so upset about our meeting."

Toward the end of
the conference, my dad and two other speakers invited some of the leaders of the
protest to join in for a time of discussion with a Harvard professor as the
moderator. Later on, one of the campus
leaders said that the conference wasn't about what they expected it to be, and
they retracted the negative remarks.

When people think
of Christians, often the only reference they have is the media and perhaps a
personal encounter. I would venture to
say that most of these encounters with other Christians must be of a negative
nature, due to the way Christians are portrayed in the news media today. But, in some situations, they hold
truth. Reports like that of Westboro
Baptist Church in the news make me cringe, because this is NOT the Jesus I
know. Protests from members picketing and holding signs like, "Gays go to hell" at a military service member's funeral and other repugnant
behavior like this is not a part of the gospel message I stand for.

However, I believe
there is at least some positive press happening. Tim Tebow has (thus far) displayed his
Christian beliefs constructively and with grace. He is an example of someone who has made a
positive impact for Jesus Christ in the world.
When he wrote John 3:16 on his cheeks for the NFL playoffs, the TOP
SEARCH on Google the day after was "John 3:16."
You can't get a better witness than that!1

A recent article in Relevant
Magazine highlighted this phenomenon of negative media attention on
Christians. Ira Glass, weekly radio show host for the NPR program This American Life
often has Christian guests on his program, and was asked by author Jim
Henderson about this occurrence of negative news attention on Christians.

Glass: Well, I feel like Christians are really,
horribly covered by the media. Like Christians
seem like a really ripe target of opportunity.

Henderson: You don't think
Christians deserve this?

Glass: What do you mean?

Henderson: The political
involvement, and the public stances that they take. You don't think it's well deserved at times?

Glass: That they're covered badly?
No.

Henderson: You don't?

Glass: No.

"Glass goes on to say many groups in America feel the media
covers them poorly, but Christians seem to get it 'especially bad.' He says
while making This
American Life, he noticed many television shows and
movies would depict Christians 'as these hot-head, crazy people.' This depiction didn't match his own
experience with Christians he knew personally."2

Is God Angry, Judgmental, and Mean?

I believe this misconstruction
of who God really is goes back to our early lives: What kind of dad did we have, and
consequently who do we think God is?
When we're young, psychology has shown that we view our parents as God,
until we develop the capacity to think for ourselves at 12 or 13 years old. As such, the memories we collect along our
journey from childhood to adulthood are often our blueprint for figuring out
who God is.

When I was a
teenager, I viewed God as distant and judgmental. Looking back, this was the way my dad had
been when I was young, so it made sense I viewed God that way. I also have a friend who grew up in a church,
but tragically when her brother molested her sister and they brought it to the
church, the church and her family did nothing.
So, later in life, she viewed the church and God as a very unsafe place
to be, even though God was not the author of that calamity. Because the people in a position of authority
did nothing, her view of God was that He would do nothing in the case of any
kind of wrongdoing. In her mind due to
this experience, it made God and religion very much unsafe.

The Body of Christ Needs Maturing

"If you judge
people, you have no time to love them." -Mother Teresa

In the book of
Revelation, the Bible says that Jesus is coming back "...to present her to
himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but
holy and blameless." (Ephesians
5:27) This tells me that we have a lot
of work to do. It is not acceptable for
us to be judgmental or disparaging - we must be the conduits of grace that
Jesus talks about. "You are the light of the world.
A city on a hill cannot be hidden."
(Matthew 5:14)

The verse above would seem to indicate that
people should feel better
when they're around us. We need to "light up people's lives." They need to
tangibly feel the love, light, and presence of God when we are around
them.

And this can only
happen when we as Christians develop our own relationship with God to a point
where we see Him more accurately, and we in turn reflect His true nature. For two long we have preached a religious
gospel versus a relationship gospel, and the two are completely contradictory.
When we try to correct or disciple people before relationship is built with us and
between them and God, this will always result in anger and resentment.

Andy Stanley,
pastor of North Point Community Church in Atlanta which draws over 24,000
weekly states, "Often, making a point undermines our influence rather than
fueling our influence."

Instead of
creating a conversation about why it's a good idea to consider Christianity and
its benefits as a good and moral pursuit, a help in troubled times, and a
confidence about our destination when we leave this earth, we seem to expect people to
automatically live by our standards.
This is like telling people how to speak Chinese when they'd never
planned on going to China, and assuming they want to learn Chinese when we've never
gotten a chance to know them and discover their interests.

"The Church has
lost massive amounts of influence in culture by attempting to legislate the
behavior of people who don't share our assumptions," Andy Stanley says. "And so
it's pointless [and] works against your ultimate agenda to try and guilt people
into or push people into behavior based on an assumption they never embraced to
begin with."3

This is not the "blessed are the peacemakers, for they will inherit the earth" Jesus I know.
This is also not the "he who has no sin cast the first stone," "woman at the well," Jesus I know.

And so, as my dad
Os Hillman has said, "God has an image problem," and in turn I say,
Christianity has an image problem. God
has an image problem because His followers are imperfect, and additionally, we
have not "matured" enough in knowing Him enough to reflect Him accurately. At the end of the day, God is about love and
grace, and a way into His eternal kingdom and His love and light. There is no true love without God. But, we've read Leviticus and not read the
book of John. We've told people to
behave as the Bible says to, before they've even had an experience with Jesus themselves. This is infringing upon
people's God-given free will. And I am not for
that.

What I am for is
for people living their best life. For
people to know that beyond a shadow of a doubt that God loves them, and because
of that, He provided a way out of our sin nature through the sacrifice of His son,
Jesus Christ.

What Is a Negative Influence?

With all of the
negativity out in the world, I would wonder why we wouldn't want something
more positive on our radar. With music
videos like Kesha's "Die Young" having an extremely negative influence on our
nation's youth, sending messages that promiscuous sex, orgies, dressing
provocatively, animal sacrifice, and Satanism is not only okay, but socially
acceptable - perhaps even socially expected, I would wonder which is actually
detrimental - a message of life and hope - or propagating a partying,
consequence-free lifestyle? (Which is
not at all free of consequence...) I
might argue that the agendas being pushed through the arts and media are
perpetuating the messages that women are sexual objects, men are stupid and
sexist, and children are supposed to be sexually active by middle school. I might argue that through advertising,
people consider pharmaceutical drugs as the first option to solving their
problems, rather than getting to the root of the problem through therapy or
healthy nutrition. We are one of only
two nations where it is legal to promote pharmaceutical drugs on
television. Does any of this sound
positive to you?

Christians are not
perfect, I can tell you that. We are
fallen human beings, and we often fall short.
But, instead of looking to us for the answer, we want to invite you to
look toward Jesus as the answer. And He
is not out to control or manipulate the world... He wants to show others just
how much He loves them, and to invite them to His heavenly "party."

"My Father's house has many rooms; if that were not so,
would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?" -John 14:2

If the news is
really dedicated to divulging the truth of the matter, I would encourage them
to look at the message of the gospel, and compare it with people who seem to be
touting a much different version of it.
(Don't we call that a misrepresentation?) In truth-seeking media where getting the "truth, and nothing but the truth" is the highest goal, examples like this that
don't line up with the core message of Christianity should be thrown out as
inaccurate, irrelevant, misrepresentative, misleading, and counterfeit.

Better Examples

I would like to
see more Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandella, Martin Luther King, and much less
Westboro Baptist Church (faulty teaching, extreme judgment), and on the other
end of the spectrum much less Rob Bell (faulty teaching, extreme grace)
highlighted in our culture. Both of
these examples should be cited as inaccurate representations, as they do
not represent the core of Christianity.

I'd like to see more emphasis on social justice actually happening,
and less "having a conversation" about it.
I'd like to see much less of a focus on the gay issue, and more of a
focus on us fixing our heterosexual divorce problem in the church today. Paul said in Corinthians, "We live in such a
way that no one will stumble because of us, and no one will find fault with our
ministry." (2 Cor 6:3) For me, this has become one of my life scriptures
because everything we do as Christians has a ripple effect.

If I've seen any
kind of examples of this throughout history, I see Mother Teresa and not
Hitler. I see the Jesus movement and not
the Crusades. I see happy, free, fulfilled,
colorful, generous people, and not religious, small thinking, stingy, scrunchy
faced, angry people. I see a much
different God than many people see. I see a God of life and color, who wants to
be intimately involved in our lives as our Perfect Father, and our best friend
and companion. I see people healed,
lives restored, and souls set free from bondage.

Now this doesn't
sound like controlling world domination like the Pinky and the Brain picture above, does it? It sounds like heaven on earth. And who in their right mind doesn't want
that?